Riddikulus!
by BeyondTheClouds777
Summary: At Grimmauld Place, Harry unexpectedly stumbles across a boggart - but his biggest fear is no longer a dementor. It's something else. Something far, far worse. Set during "The Order of the Phoenix." SPOILERS. NO SLASH.


Many conversations floated through the air over the table in the basement – Ron and Tonks were discussing which brooms were their favorite and why, Fred and George were still upstairs, putting away the Venomous Tentacula seeds they had managed to bargain Mundungus for, and it seemed that Harry couldn't find peace of mind or will to speak despite the rare cheeriness that had seemed to possess every occupant of the table. Mad-Eye Moody kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye in a way that made Harry's stomach churn. Mad-Eye had a way of bestowing nausea on him by his swerving, all-seeing magical eye.

Harry said little the entire dinner. His hearing at the Ministry of Magic was like a phantom to him now: it existed in the past and yet it still haunted him. He couldn't help but think occasionally, what if he hadn't found favor? What if Fudge managed to convict him? What if he'd been expelled from Hogwarts while Ron and Hermione became wizards and witches (now Perfects, he had to add). He didn't think he would have been able to stand it.

Mrs. Weasley was fussing about Bill's hair, never missing a moment to simper, "Oh, it would look so much better short, dear...you should really think about getting it cut..." while Bill was trying desperately to keep his self-control in tact and not snap at his mother.

Sirius Black was talking, but Harry couldn't make out what he was saying. He was too focused on everything else...he would go back to Hogwarts soon, very soon. He couldn't wait. He missed Hogwarts, really, but with all the odd-goings-on, he wasn't so sure just what would happen when he got back to Hogwarts. He wondered who the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor was, but that was the least of his worries.

His scar had been burning, quite horribly, in fact. It gave him a severe feeling of anxiety and foreboding. So far, the only times his scar had hurt had been when Voldemort was at large. The last time he'd experienced pain in his scar this badly and this frequently was when he was in the graveyard, tied to Tom Riddle's grave, screaming, watching, hopeless while Voldemort rose.

A sharp pain shot through his scar, and he had to bite his tongue to keep himself silent. After everyone else had eaten, Mrs. Weasley stood abruptly.

"Well," she said, "I think I'll sort out that boggart before I turn in...Arthur, I don't want this lot up too late, alright?" Mr. Weasley waved a hand in a silent way of saying he'd heard her. "Night, Harry dear," she said, and turned to leave.

As to avoid anymore unwanted conversations, as soon as Mrs. Weasley's footsteps were out of earshot, he stood. He could retire early without being missed. "Night, Ron," he said, and Ron barely said, "Night, Harry," before he went right back to chatting his favorite Quidditch teams with Tonks.

Harry stepped up the stairs and began walking down the long corridor, his footsteps echoing and creaking on the loose floorboards. The entire area was dark and dusty, and the further Harry walked, the further the suspicion something lurking in the shadows waiting to attack abounded. The spiderweb-littered and dusty hallway gave him an eerie feeling. A pain ran through his scar as if for emphasis.

And so he continued to walk.

He stepped on a particularly loose board and hadn't expected the creak to be so horrendously loud. The creak sounded more like a screech that echoed down the long, long corridor, and Harry yelped, springing backwards as though burned – it was not one of his better ideas. When he leapt backwards, he crashed into a door against the wall he hadn't seen – it must have been some sort of broom closet.

But, broom closet or not, he still crashed into it, and the door flew open. He heard a _Crack!_ and, without even turning to look, knew in an instant that it was a boggart.

Boggarts...Harry had never liked them. They were shapeshifters, but what made them particularly terrifying was that they shapeshifted into whatever their victim feared the most. Last year, during the final task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Harry had come across a boggart, and in his third Hogwarts year, Professor Lupin (former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher) had taught Harry the spell to use against a boggart.

It was the _Riddikulus_ spell, in which the boggart was forced to shapeshift from something terrifying into something commical. Harry was about to run and find someone who could use the spell on the boggart, since as an underage wizard, he wasn't permitted to.

But when he actually looked at the boggart, he forgot about leaving.

He forgot about everything.

The boggart (except Harry had quite forgotten it was a boggart now) tumbled out of the closet in the shape of Ron's dead body. Blank, dead eyes stared up at Harry, unseeing, motionless, lightless. Flecks of blood covered his face as if in mockery of his multiple freckles. He was deathly pale, and all around looked a bit, well, _dead_.

Harry's breath quickened. He moved backwards – in the back of his mind a voice screamed _Riddikulus!_ but he couldn't bring himself to care.

There was another _Crack!_ and Harry was no longer looking at Ron's dead, pale, lifeless face.

Instead, he was looking at Hermione's. Her bushy brown hair was matted in what looked like mud – or, what Harry _hoped_ was mud, and not dried, clotted blood. Her eyes, normally so bright and full of intense curiosity and longing to get better than best grades, were now even worse off than Ron's had been.

Harry collapsed without fully even knowing what he was doing. "No," he whispered. "No, please...no...stop..." Hermione had always been like a sister to him, ever since his first year at Hogwarts, just like Ron had always been like Harry's brother. Seeing both of them dead...seeing both of them lifeless...it was enough to make him scream and tear his hair out.

This was torture. That's what it was. Harry now understood how a boggart's ways were so effective. Or, he would have, if he'd been able to call to mind that this was a boggart and not his friend's dead bodies.

With another _crack_ the boggart shifted again, but this time, it didn't shift into one particular thing. It shifted into a ray of odd, green light, which grew brighter and dimmer with every second. Then, there were voices. Two he longed to hear, and another he wished he didn't recognize at all.

 _"Lily! It's him, it's Harry! Take Harry and go!"_

The blast grew brighter. There was a deep, croaky voice, followed by a loud, screechy, desperate one.

 _"JAMES!"_

Harry's scar burned so badly he thought he would die. "Stop!" he cried; when had the tears started? He didn't remember letting those tears fall. "S-stop it!"

But the memory continued, regardless of Harry's pleas.

 _"No! Not Harry! Take me instead!"_

 _"Step aside, foolish girl!"_

Another blast of intense green, a deep, chilling laugh, and yet a third bright green light...Harry recognized the light...and worse, he recognized the memory...

The next bout of pain that assailed his head was so bad he couldn't help but scream. He screamed, but he didn't feel like he was screaming. He felt like he was listening to someone else scream, not doing it himself. Some part of him was still shouting _Riddikulus!_ or telling him that none of this was real and that it was just a boggart, but his eyes were betraying what he knew.

The green light faded into something even worse. This time, there was an entire heap of dead bodies, bloodied and lifeless and still with Ron and Hermione's bodies piled at the top. Beneath them were Lupin, Mr. And Mrs. Weasley, Fred, George, Tonks, Bill, Charlie, Harry's friends from Hogwarts, Sirius, his mother and father...

The pain in his head grew ten-fold, and he couldn't stop the scream that tore through his throat.

...

"Where'd Harry go?" Ron asked, noticing for the first time that his best friend was no longer at the table. "Did he go to bed? Already?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "He said goodnight to you, Ron," she huffed. "So, yes, I suppose that does mean he retired early. What do you think?" She turned to Tonks. "Boys," she whispered. "I never really understood them.

Tonks nodded seriously.

For a while, they joked while Ron turned scarlet red and muttered something about girls being the confusing, undecipherable ones – but a scream stopped all the conversations floating across the table.

The scream wouldn't have been half as terrifying if Ron hadn't recognized it – and by the look on Hermione's face, she recognized it, too. They looked at each other, eyes wide, expressions otherwise flat.

"Harry," they both whispered, and were instantly on their feet, racing up the stairs before either of them actually registered moving at all.

Sirius was also on his feet, as were Mr. Weasley, Bill, Tonks, Lupin, and the rest of the company. Ron and Hermione, unsurprisingly, were the first to reach the top of the stairs, and what they saw shook them to the core.

Harry was on the ground, back pressed against the wall, knees drawn against his chest. He was sobbing – Ron had never seen Harry so upset before. Not like this. After a few moments, Ron understood why. A heap of dead bodies laid in front of Harry...they looked so real that Ron thought they were...but no, they couldn't be. Ron's body was there, and Ron was staring at his own body. The dead bodies of others present were also among Ron's body, which could really only mean one thing...

Lupin was the first to react as he came up the stairs behind Ron and Hermione and quickly assessed the scene before him. He put himself before the boggart, and with a _crack_ , the boggart changed forms. The image of a full moon became the boggart's new appearance, and when Lupin shouted, " _Riddikulus!"_ and brandished his wand at the monster, the moon exploded into a shower of silver confetti.

Ron, meantime, raced to Harry, pursued by Hermione. Harry didn't move from his position against the wall; he kept sobbing, his head on his knees, arms wrapped around his legs tightly. Ron grabbed Harry's shoulder, ignored Harry's flinch, and shook him.

"Harry," he said, because he didn't know what else to say, "are you alright?"

The look on Hermione's face said it all. That was definitely a stupid question. But Harry still answered it regardless, only he answered it as if he were talking to himself, not to his friends.

"E-everyone dies," Harry sobbed. "Everyone...i-it doesn't m-matter who t-they are...t-t-they just d-die..."

"No, we didn't," Ron said. Hermione was no help; she looked about ready to burst into tears herself at the sight of Harry in such a broken state. Neither of them had seen Harry like this before, and they'd been through a lot with him, from two-faced Professor Quirrell in first year, the possessive diary of Tom Riddle and the Basilisk paralyzing students in second year, saving Sirius and Buckbeak in their third year, Harry competing in the Tri-Wizard tournament in their fourth year, watching Voldemort rise, and now, this: hiding in a house riddled with monsters and other unpleasant things (including the painting of Sirius' mother that wouldn't stop screaming like a banshee).

But even through all that, none of them had seen Harry cry like this. He wasn't one to cry. He never had been.

"We're not dead, Harry!" Hermione finally said in a choked, desperate voice. "None of us are...oh Harry..."

Behind them, Mrs. Weasley arrived, freezing dead in her tracks behind Sirius, Tonks, and the others. She had been saying something about, "I heard a scream! Is everything alright?" before entering, but she cut herself off abruptly when she looked at Ron, Hermione, and more specifically, Harry, on the far side of the room.

"Everyone d-d-dies," Harry sobbed. "Everyone dies...a-and it's my f-fault..."

It didn't take much to understand what he meant. Lily and James Potter, his mother and father, had died when he was little because Voldemort wanted to kill him, Harry. And in fourth year, Cedric Diggory had died in the final task for the Tri-Wizard Tournament when Harry told Cedric that they would take the victory for Hogwarts together.

And the boggart hadn't helped at all, either...did Harry even know it had been a boggart, or did he think that, like his parents and Cedric, everyone had died, supposedly because of him?

It had been hard enough before to watch Harry like this...but now that he knew why, Ron felt even worse about it. Finally, he could stand it no longer. He was was the youngest boy in his family - he had five older brothers, all of which had comforted him at some point in his life, whether he woke up from a nightmare, or was injured in some way. Even Fred and George, pranksters as they were, dropped the pranks to come to his aid.

He didn't know what Harry expected him to do, but Ron couldn't sit there and watch his best friend suffer. He grabbed Harry tightly - probably tighter than he meant to - and embraced him tightly. It wasn't the best position, with both of them kneeling on the ground like they were, but it was better than nothing. Harry stiffened instantly and tried to pull away, but Ron didn't let him.

"It's alright, mate," Ron said, "it's alright, we're here for you."

It took a few moments, but Harry finally let his already wounded dignity crumble. He embraced Ron back fiercely, sobbing into his shoulder.

"It's alright, Harry," Ron said. "It's alright…"

Mrs. Weasley was telling Fred and George to go make tea, and the twins raced off. Ron trusted them not to pull a prank - they didn't prank Harry, although Ron never understood why. Harry's sobs didn't lessen, and Ron's hold on him never loosened. He'd seen part of the boggart...he'd seen the bodies, but he'd known they weren't real. Harry, by the looks of it, hadn't.

"It was a boggart, Harry," Ron said. "It wasn't real...it wasn't real…"

Hermione whimpered in her throat and wrapped her arms around Harry from behind, sandwiching him between Ron and herself. No one else moved; Sirius was saying something to Lupin and Mr. Weasley about making sure there weren't any more boggarts lurking about (something he sounded very angry and stern and worried about all at once), but other than that, the only thing to hear was Harry's heart-wrenching sobs.

Finally, Harry stopped sobbing, but his tears didn't cease, and neither did his hold on Ron. "I-I'm sorry," he choked. "I-I'm s-sorry, Ron…Hermione..."

"It's okay, Harry," Hermione whimpered; a few tears were running down her own cheeks. She squeezed Harry tighter, resting her cheek between his shoulder blades. "It's okay..."

"W-what must you t-think of me n-now?" Harry said, voice muffled against Ron's shoulder.

"We don't think any different of you, Harry," Ron said. "I promise you, we don't think any different. You will always, _always_ , be our friend, no matter _what_ happens."

"Always," Hermione agreed shakily but honestly. "Always, Harry...please, don't ever forget that, please…"

Harry nodded feverishly. "I-I won't," he said, "I w-won't...thank you...thank you…"

"Any time, mate," Ron said reassuringly. "Any time."

 **Author's Notes:**

 **IT'S SO FLUFFY! I like writing fluff. I do so often. :)**

 **So, I'm a relatively new Harry Potter fan (I'm only a little over 200 pages into "Order of the Phoenix", and I just started reading the books recently), and I think Harry Potter is probably the most amazing fictional book series I have ever read! I love it! I can't believe I didn't read it before recent. :)**

 **I'm thinking about writing a full Harry Potter fanfiction, too, pretty soon. So, let me know what you think, and remember, this has been a NO SLASH story! :D**

 **Until next story! :D**

 **-BeyondTheClouds777**


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